Is this even legal?

[lexin]

I tried to make an appointment with a local hairdresser today, and when I did finally get an answer, they let me make an appointment, but asked for my email address. Thinking nothing of it, I gave it to them. Then I get a note from them that reads:

Hair Culture London would like to confirm your appointment on Saturday, 17 October 2020 at 10:00 .

We do take a £50 reservation fee for colour and £20 for all other appointments. We do this simply to protect our stylist time. The reservation fee will be redeemed of your bill on the day of your appointment. In an event of a cancellation or rescheduling, you would need to lets us know at least 72h in advance of your appointment time in order to receive your deposit back. If you let us know about the cancellation or rescheduling less than 72h to your appointment you would lose your deposit payment. Deposit payment can be made via bank transfer (you can find bank transfer details bellow). The Reservation fee payment must be made within 12h from receiving this email. In an event that you don’t pay reservation fee within 12h, unfortunately we would have to cancel your appointment due to a high demand. You can always keep your right of not to pay the reservation fee, in this kind of situation unfortunately we cannot keep your date and time available for you. You can always contact us on the day of the desired time to see if we have any space left, if we do have any space left, we will gladly book you in without a need to pay reservation fee.

Bank Transfer details: (and the transfer details were below).

Is that even legal?

Essentially they’re threatening that if you don’t pay a “reservation fee” you can’t have an appointment, and if you cancel too late or don’t turn up, they take your money. It seems to me that this is a payment exacted for no service.

I’ve been able to walk in to this hairdresser off the street and get my hair cut, and I’m very much tempted to go back to doing that. It may be that all sorts of things may prevent you cancelling within their 72 hour deadline, ranging from accident, through illness, to someone else’s illness. If they were to give you your money back if they re-book the slot, that would be one thing, but they won’t. You just have to hope that the slot you’ve booked isn’t taken.

Am I right in thinking this is at least a bit of a cheek on their part?

Comments

[stranger]

This is something I've seen hotels do (in the U.S.) and long-distance trains and ships, but I haven't seen it for hairdressers or manicurists. I'd only expect it with one-of-a-kind artistes, who presumably are in high demand and have a seller's market. This may describe your hairdresser at the moment -- I gather that good isolation-and-cleaning raises the overhead a lot, and, people going out for their first haircut in months might be either (a) fearful, therefore prone to cancel, or (b) very ready to get the thing done, therefore willing to book even with a fee.

I wonder if the same-day approach would work in practice. If they're having enough cancellations to want the reservation fees, maybe they'll have some open slots after all. It sounds like everything is riskier now.

[lexin]

Very true.

[bluewolf458]

Reservation fee of £20 for a hair cut? That means the cost of a hair cut is at least £20? £20????? Okay, my hairdresser here comes to the house so there are no shop upkeep costs, but she only charges £7 to cut my hair.

I realise that London prices are higher than those in rural Scotland, but £20 sounds to me very much like ripping off the customer!

[lexin]

The cost of a wet cut and blow dry at that particular hairdresser is £42. It's a really good cut, don't get me wrong, but the cost is, I think, extortionate. Unfortunately it's the only hairdresser at my end of Leytonstone that hasn't shut down.

[bluewolf458]

It's more than extortionate - £42 is highway robbery!

[aunty_marion]

I'm more towards Central London than lexin is, and I've been paying £18 or £20 for a 'dry trim' (they just spray the hair to dampen it down enough to cut). Not that I've had it cut since January - I did it myself a couple of months back!

[lexin]

The hairdresser I used to use (run by a group of Chinese ladies who constantly changed, so that I suspected it to be a money laundering outfit) charged £22 for a dry trim. Leytonstone is not cheap for haircuts. Or much else.

[legionseagle]

It would in my view be legal if you had been made aware of the reservation fee at the time when you put in your appointment booking. I think trying to superimpose it later falls within the rule in Olley v Marlborough Court Hotel.

[lexin]

Thank you for that. There was no way I could have known this was part of the contract as the company do not have a website. I think you can book online in some way which is not clear to me, and I would have probably expected to partially pay at that stage if I'd booked online, but I didn't, I booked over the phone.

I've never been asked to pay in advance by a hairdresser before.

[lilysea]

I hope that no one who is supposed to be self-isolating due to contact with a known/suspected COVID case

comes in because they don't want to lose their deposit... :(

[lexin]

That hadn't occurred to me, and is not a happy thought.

[watervole]

I wonder if they've had to lay off some staff due to Covid and are operating on very tight margins due to the need to clean between customers.

I may simply be that they have had a high number of cancellations (because people have to self-isolate while waiting for a test result and lots of people have non-Covid infections that need a test) and are losing money as a result.

I'm cutting my own hair during this period, it's one way of avoiding the problem. It isn't perfect, but it isn't too bad either. Richard does the bit at the back.

[lexin]

When I got there it was pretty busy, but they could have been filling in having had lots of cancellations.

I'm not confident enough to cut my own hair.